Of all Roberto Mancini's signings, the imminent arrival of Edin Dzeko may be the final piece in the jigsaw for Manchester City's title hopes.

With 69 goals in 113 games for Wolfsburg, Dzeko would appear the ideal candidate to ease the goalscoring burden on Carlos Tevez and help push City to their first trophy for 35 years.

Dzeko is poised expected to complete his £27million move to City later this week, once personal terms are agreed on a five-year deal that is expected to earn the 24-year-old around £120,000-a-week.

That City need another striker, with their over-reliance on Tevez, Mario Balotelli's relative inexperience and unpredictability, along with Mancini having decided to jettison Emmanuel Adebayor, Roque Santa Cruz and Jo, is beyond question.

Mancini is convinced Dzeko could mean the difference between City - level on points at the top of the table with Manchester United - coming agonisingly close or laying both hands on the Premier League trophy this season.

"We have the chance to win the league this year and the decisive factor could be Edin Dzeko. This player can decide titles and that is why we want him."

But the big question is whether the addition of Dzeko to City's squad will enhance Mancini's expensively-assembled cosmopolitan squad or destabilise it, just as the arrival of Rodney Marsh did back in 1972.

When City signed Marsh, they were four points clear at the top, but ended the season in fourth place, his arrival in March seen as having cost them the title, handing it to Derby.

"If Manchester City had not signed me that year, would we have won the championship?" recalled Marsh some years later. "I believe the answer is yes."

City were forced to change the way they played to accommodate Marsh, to the detriment of their title challenge, as recalled by former striker and chairman Francis Lee, who recalled the blown title as if it were yesterday.

Lee said: "Wyn Davies was centre-forward and I played off him. But to accommodate Rodney, they dropped Wyn and moved me back to centre-forward.

"The way we'd been playing became disrupted, although that's no excuse because professional players should not need an excuse."

Mike Summerbee, another member of the City side that blew the title that season, acknowledged Marsh's arrival as the moment their challenge began to unravel.

"We had to change our style and that didn't help," recalled Summerbee. "We were a quick, attacking team with the ball pinging around between us.

"Rodney's inclusion inevitably changed that. It slowed us down, and that is nothing against his ability on the ball. Rodney wanted to hold the ball up and that wasn't our style."

It remains to be seen whether, almost 40 years on, the acquisition of Dzeko will enhance City's title challenge or disrupt their push for the Premier League crown and a first top-flight championship success since 1968.

Certainly, Dzeko's height - 6ft 3in - aerial ability and physical presence, allied to an impressive repertoire of goals with either foot and his head, will give City an alternative to Tevez and a different dimension to the way they play.

And there is no danger of Dzeko slowing City down in the way Marsh did four decades ago, his burst of pace and ability to steal a crucial yard or two on defenders a recurring theme in the glut of goals through which he has made his name.

City defender Jerome Boateng, who came up against Dzeko in Germany when he was playing for Hamburg, hailed Mancini's latest signing as the complete forward who can take the fiercely ambitious club to the next level.

"Dzeko is a young player who has everything," said Boateng. "He shoots with right and left and can head the ball. He's very strong, a very good striker.

"Of course we would love to see him at City because he is a quality player. He played against Hamburg a few times when I was there and he scored.

"I've marked him sometimes and it's always a good physical challenge. He holds the ball very well, he knows how to move his body.

"He's not so quick but is very good in front of goal and would work well with our other strikers."

Mancini, who favours playing with one striker up front, supported by two wide men, with a player just off the lone forward, is unlikely to revert to a traditional 4-4-2 formation with the arrival of Dzeko.

It is more likely that the City boss will alternate beween Tevez and Dzeko, both out-and-out front men, with Balotelli able to complement them by playing out wide or through the middle.

Dzeko arrived in Marbella yesterday to join up with the rest of the Wolflsburg squad at a training camp ahead of the resumption of the Bundesliga season following the Christmas break.

But the forward is expected to fly to Manchester as early as tomorrow once personal terms are agreed between City and his representative, the final stumbling block before the deal can be completed.

Only time will tell whether the signing of Dzeko, who has pushed Mancini's spending through the £150m barrier in a little over a year in charge, will prove a masterstroke or an expensive and unnecessary blunder that costs City the title.